How Much Better Can 2011 Get?

Hello good readers and welcome to our latest blog. Our apologies for making you wait so long between posts but a lot has been happening in our lives over the past few months, so let’s fill you in with what has been going on.

Firstly, we have taken the plunge and bought a house. We came across a property that was as close to perfect as we could get without having to build one from scratch. It is a single story beast with four large bedrooms, a double garage, a huuuuuge lounge and, most importantly, a man cave (also known as a home cinema room) where all my boy toys are rigged up. It also has an impressive en-suite area off the main bedroom that has a walk-in shower and twin sinks (now I don’t have to put up with a sink full of whiskers after Bec has had a shave, or is that the other way around?). There is also an impressively sized main bathroom at the opposite end of the house near the other bedrooms. The house also has a separate utility room for some of the female based activities, like washing and sorting clothes out (ha, ha). There is a large decked area for barbecuing and outdoor entertaining that gives you access to the main part of our garden that runs the length of the house. This comprises of a lawned area with some raised flowerbeds and is just big enough to play in but won’t take loads of time to maintain (thank God, gardening is relaxing as long as it doesn’t go for any longer than . . . . . . . . . . . . . five minutes). The most striking part of our property has to be the kitchen with its polished concrete floors, stone benchtops, crisp modern cabinets and full sized fridge freezer that has chilled mains water and an ice making facility. Just right for those forty degree days (which we haven’t really had that many of since this year’s summer decided to sleep in). We cannot believe how big our house is and it probably has five times the floor space of our house back in England. The last feature that is worth mentioning is outside our front door and is something Lucy is really making the most of: A playpark. Garden size is irrelevant now because all the play equipment she could ever want is just a hop, skip and a jump away from our front door. Many an hour has been spent in the park soaking up the evening sun and watching pelicans, lorikeets, gallahs, magpies and cockatoos fly over. However, we did take a gamble on buying this place since when we started the purchasing process we didn’t have permanent residency, but were close to submitting approval for it.

On the 2nd February 2011 I was finally able to submit our online application for permanent residency. We had met the conditions to turn our provisional visa into one that would allow us to stay in Australia indefinitely. Unfortunately the waiting period for this process was listed as five months on the immigration website, a waiting period that was also in jeopardy of being extended due to the visa processing unit in Brisbane being severely affected by the Queensland floods. Oh well, we’ve waited two years already so what is another five or so months? However, just over two weeks later Bec noticed that the payment for the visa had been taken out of our bank account suggesting that it was being looked at; an assumption that was later proved right by the arrival of an email asking for one more piece of information to help finalise our application. After a few days of nerve-wracking waiting we finally received that one piece of information, our police checks.We scanned them and uploaded them to our case worker and began the final wait. A  few days went by but nothing materialised. No phone calls, no emails, no nothing. Damn!

February the 23rd (Lucy’s 11th birthday) rolled into view as I sat up burning the midnight oil, but as the need for sleep caught up with me I decided to check on the progress of our visa before heading off to bed. Tap, tap, tap, whack went the keys on the laptop as I logged into our account. Click, click, click, wait, wait, wait. SHOCK, SHOCK, SHOCK, blink, blink, blink, pinch, pinch, pinch. Was I really reading what my eyes were seeing? Visa: Granted. Residency status: Permanent. Period of stay: Indefinite. Wahoo! My next dilemma was when to tell Bec and Lucy. Should I wake them up or surprise them in the morning? I chose the latter and thought it would be better to play it cool and make out there was something on the laptop for them to see. This way they would have no suspicions about what they were going to see (had I have awoken them at one in the morning they may have guessed what I was going to show them), and boy, were they surprised. Lucy’s eleventh birthday began with, what she says, was one of her best presents ever.

We all now go about our daily lives with even bigger smiles than usual because we have achieved what we set out to do: Live in Australia for as long as we want.

So, with permanent residency out of the way we can continue to live our lives as we began them by doing as much as possible but without the worry of our visa ever running out. When we haven’t been caught up with getting the house sorted out, unpacking and other run-of-the-mill jobs we have continued to enjoy our Australian way of life. We still travel around checking out familiar and not so familiar places, turn down new roads when we come across them, take pictures of the amazing wildlife (especially pelicans because they still amaze me), dine out as much as we can, have a coffee whenever possible (well I do) and BBQ everything where possible.

Our jobs are going well and I really love teaching again, working in a school that is in a low socio-economic area has been a real eye opener and brought me a lot of new challenges. The people of Geelong council are starting to realise Bec’s true potential and she is becoming involved in a lot of their major projects, some of which have fringe benefits for her family. For example, a few weeks back there was an international air show at Avalon Airport (30km from where we live). The council had a marquee there for some privileged guests, which Lucy and I happened to be. With the runway less than 100m away from our seating and staff bringing us as much food and drink as we wanted, it truly was an amazing way to watch a spectacular assortment of modern and vintage aeroplanes being put through their paces. However, our jumped up status also gave us the chance to look around an American B52 bomber (for you thickies out there this is the plane that drops a world of hurt in the form of bombs from unbelievable heights). This really made my day but I think the aircrew were glad to see the back of me and my non-stop question asking. They probably thought I was the result of some science experiment that had gone wrong and left a nine year old boy trapped in a man’s body. Never mind. Bec is also working on a project to bring cruise liners to Geelong and a few weeks back one came in to the city to test out its facilities (check out the picture). Suffice to say it looked impressive and dwarfed everything around it, it was cooooooooool and I couldn’t stop staring at it. All I can hope for now is that Bec gets asked to travel around Australia to research already established cruise liner facilities. Ooooooh, the possibilities.

I guess that is about it for now. Coming up is the Melbourne Grand Prix and a family holiday to Fiji during the Easter break (very, very exciting). We are also close to the beginning of the whale migration season which never gets boring and I am sure there is a lot of other unplanned stuff on our horizons too.

So until the next time good readers, G’day.